Author Archives: paulmcl

Guest blog: John Lambert

Posted on March 3, 2009 by paulmcl

Today’s guest is John Lambert. He is another Brit and is currently CEO of Virtutech (I was his VP marketing for a time). Prior to that he still has the scars from many years at Rational starting from the early … Continue reading →

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Fab 5

Posted on March 1, 2009 by paulmcl

For some time I have been talking about the semiconductor industry as the Fab 5, since there have been five process “clubs”. A few players hedge their bets and are in more than one club. The fab five are Intel … Continue reading →

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No sex before marriage in EDA

Posted on February 27, 2009 by paulmcl

In most businesses, every company doesn’t feel the need to make every product that it sells. When you buy a car from General Motors, they don’t make the ABS system themselves, they buy it from Delphi or from Bosch. When … Continue reading →

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We’re driving in a fog

Posted on February 26, 2009 by paulmcl

I went along to what used to be John Cooley’s EDA bigwigs panel and is now Peggy Aycinena’s “Is EDA dead or alive?” I had to keep asking myself am I dead or alive for the first part of the … Continue reading →

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Guest blog: Grant Martin

Posted on February 26, 2009 by paulmcl

Today’s guest blog is from Grant Martin, Chief scientist at Tensilica. He worked for Burroughs in Scotland (in Cumbernauld, of all places, which makes Newark look attractive), Nortel in Canada, and then at Cadence before moving to Tensilica. He literally … Continue reading →

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Power again

Posted on February 25, 2009 by paulmcl

Yesterday I promised an overview of what power reduction techniques are out there. First, a disclosure: I was interim CEO of Envis for about a year and I’ve done some consulting for Nanochronous. Firstly, there are two kinds of power: … Continue reading →

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Blazing a trail

Posted on February 24, 2009 by paulmcl

The mystery of whether Blaze DFM had closed down or not is over. It has been acquired by Tela Innovations mainly, it would seem, for the PowerTrim technology that had been licensed by TSMC. A major strategic relationship between Tela … Continue reading →

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Power is the new timing

Posted on February 24, 2009 by paulmcl

In the 1980s, chip design was focused on layout: cramming all those gates into as few chips as possible, trying make use of every square millimeter of silicon. The 1990s were the decade of timing, when all the tools became … Continue reading →

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The all-purpose EDA keynote

Posted on February 23, 2009 by paulmcl

I’ve given lots of keynote speeches about EDA over the years. You too can give your own keynote if you follow these simple secret guidelines. Ladies and gentlemen… Moore’s law…blah, blah, blah. Show generic Moore’s law slide. New challenges. Scary. … Continue reading →

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Will you green-light my chip?

Posted on February 20, 2009 by paulmcl

I already took a cursory look at the fact that the semiconductor industry is going to restructure, partially driven by the current economic downturn but mainly by the fact that almost all semiconductor companies are going to become completely fabless. … Continue reading →

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